The Fire This Time
Driving through Watch Hill, a wealthy neighborhood perched atop a promontory that juts out into the Atlantic Ocean from the town of Westerly, Rhode Island, one might be forgiven for thinking that all is well in the Republic. Here, handsome families stroll the covered walkways of the village, past high-end realtors’ offices, upscale gift shops, and charming restaurants. Expensive sail and motor boats bob on their moorings in the cove, including one waterborne behemoth with an enormous, arching flybridge and a helicopter landing pad. In one corner of the main drag, children squeal as the Flying Horse Carousel stirs to life, the way it has thousands of times every summer since 1876. At the nearby St. Clair Annex, adults and kids alike wrestle with top-heavy ice cream cones beneath patriotic bunting. Around the corner from the Annex, on the private Watch Hill Beach, the privileged and their progeny luxuriate in the shade of canvas cabanas, splash about in the low surf, or sashay along the shore toward the mile-long dune of Napatree Point. A subdued sunlight lies warm on the skin. The skirls of seagulls and the muttering of well-tuned auto engines compete with gentle pipe organ melodies and the background hum of crashing waves. Every sense seems to confirm that Watch Hill and the world around it is a peaceful, orderly, and happy place.
But on this day storm clouds loom to the north, above the palatial homes and barbered lawns on the bluff. As I pull into a parking spot on Bay St., a dark line of shadow moves across the promontory, past the elegant Ocean House, and races down the steep slope into the village. Just as the midday darkness envelopes the scene, a low drumroll of thunder sounds and a strong wind sweeps up the boulevard, rattling cafe umbrellas and upending baseball caps. At once, the happy faces disappear, replaced by disbelieving glances aimed at the traitorous sky. A moment later, when the first sharp crack of thunder announces the arrival of rain, those faces turn to worry, then frustration, and finally, anger. Within minutes, the lovely late summer scene has been swept away, as wind and rain batter the covered walks and expensive shops, egged on by heaving waves that have appeared in the cove.
In America, the leading edge of a storm far worse than the one that inconvenienced those happy crowds in Watch Hill is now bearing down on us. The fast-moving shadows of the past thirty years - the accumulation of public and private debt, the overextension of empire, our addiction to oil and abuse of the planet – are giving way to the full cyclonic fury of collapse. In 2008, when the first shadows raced across the body politic, the face of America was painted with disbelief and worry, as one institution of American capitalism after another collapsed in a welter of mismanagement, criminal hubris, and outright fraud. By the summer of 2011, with the nation teetering on the brink of a deflationary depression, zombified state and local governments lurching toward bankruptcy, and hot wars in at least five foreign lands, the face of America is turning from frustration to anger, and that anger may itself soon be transformed into an unfocused, irrational rage. Despite what the acolytes of our national civil religion believe, the United States does not hold an exemption from history and human nature. Time and again, both here and elsewhere, conditions of social crisis have given rise to violence against marginal or minority populations.
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“When human groups divide and become fragmented, during a period of malaise and conflicts, they may come to a point where they are reconciled again at the expense of a victim. Observers nowadays realize without difficulty, unless they belong to the persecuting group, that this victim is not really responsible for what he or she is accused of doing. The accusing group, however, views the victim as guilty, by virtue of a contagion similar to what we find in scapegoat rituals. The members of this group accuse their ‘scapegoat’ with great fervor and sincerity. More often than not some incident, whether fantastic or trivial, has triggered a wave of opinion against this victim, a mild version of mimetic snowballing and the victim mechanism.” – Rene Girard, from “I See Satan Fall Like Lightning”
Rene Girard’s Mimetic Theory provides rich insights into the conditions that incubate scapegoating and other manifestations of individual and group violence. Very briefly, Girard finds mimesis, or imitation, at the heart of human motivation and behavior, and especially the mystery of violence. Mimesis manifests most intensely in the imitation of desire. The classic example is a child placed alone in a room full of toys. The child will invariably play with one, then another, then another, without any particular attachment to or passion for any of them. But place a second child in the room, and the toy that child picks up, even half-heartedly, will become an object of intense desire for the first child, which will in turn awaken an inexplicable desire for the toy in the child holding it. The result is a contagion of rivalry and conflict. Examples like this one, both prosaic and profound, saturate the literature and history of humankind (not to mention clinical texts). This ubiquity has led Girard to conclude that the mimetic contagion is a fundamental anthropological and psychological constant. We “catch” desire from one another.
The acquisitive gesture, rooted in mimetic desire – “MINE!” – doesn’t occur only in a child’s playroom, of course. It can be detected at every level of human interaction, from the intensely personal to the macrosocial. And yet, without some means of modulating or at least channeling imitative desire, the human race would have long ago destroyed itself in a rivalrous bellum omnium contra omnes. It turns out that the acquisitive gesture has a correlate that is equally powerful and subject to mimetic contagion: The accusatory gesture: “HIM!” Girard has shown that in conditions of widespread social conflict and violence, an accusatory gesture aimed at a representative third party can shift the direction and momentum of mimetic contagion at breakneck speed. When the “MINE!” becomes a “HIM!” the Hobbesian war of all against all is nearly instantly transformed into a war of all against one. Suddenly, all the rivalry and division that had hitherto threatened the survival of the social unit is dissolved into a state of “unanimity minus one.” All the frustration, guilt, sin and violent energy of the group is poured out on the hapless victim, the scapegoat, in what Robert Hamerton-Kelly has termed the “generative mimetic scapegoating mechanism” (GMSM).
What the GMSM “generates” is a renewed social solidarity, purpose and even personal righteousness. It is mimetic in the sense that the accusatory rage is passed like a contagion from person to person at breakneck speed. It is a mechanism because it is a system composed on multiple parts orientated toward a definite purpose: the shedding of social frustration, anger and resentment. Girard has shown that in archaic societies, scapegoating events resulted in a sense of social harmony so powerful and transformative that they were experienced religiously. Not surprisingly, these signal events then became the basis of most tribal founding myths, complete with the transfiguration of human victims into monsters, animals, even competing (and lesser) gods. And when priests and shamans discovered that sacrificial reenactments of the original act of violence could yield the same sacral solidarity first experienced by the community, those reenactments became the basis of archaic religion and human culture.
Over two millennia, the efficacy of the GMSM has been attenuated to some degree by the influence of the Judeo-Christian scriptures, and especially the Christian gospels. The GMSM is efficient only in the degree to which the innocence of its victims is occluded by myth or, in modern application, ideology. But the gospels undermine that efficiency by inculcating an inescapable sense of identification with victims. Jesus, the “lamb slain from the foundation of the world,” is a type of all the innocent victims of mob violence. His crucifixion appears, at least on the surface, to be just another in a long line of scapegoating events. In fact, it’s intended to be just that, or as Caiaphas says while plotting Christ’s death, “it is better than one man should die than that the whole people perish.” But Jesus is not like other victims. In addition to the structural innocence he shares with them, Jesus possesses an actual innocence, a divine goodness, so profound and transparent that the Roman soldier, seeing Christ being taken down from the cross, is moved to confess that “truly, this was an innocent man.” Girard demonstrates that this realization is an utterly unique cultural event. Even if one accepts the gospels as literature only (which was Girard’s position when he made this discovery), there is no question that the implications for conventional human culture and religion are fundamental.
But that challenge is not without cost. By revealing the innocence of victims, the gospel robs society of its ability to efficiently restore social harmony swiftly and efficiently through the GMSM: “I come not to bring peace, but a sword.” As Gil Bailie, one of Girard’s most important and original interpreters, has written:
“The gospel revelation could not overturn conventional culture abruptly, and mercifully it has not … Attempts to destroy the sacrificial or scapegoating structures of culture always proceed in a scapegoating and sacrificial manner. To put it in New Testament terms, Satan is always casting our Satan. The gospel revelation, on the contrary, undermines these structures by deconstructing their justifying myths and awakening a concern for their victims that gradually renders these structures morally unacceptable and socially counterproductive … Those [societies] living closer to the gospel’s epicenter – beginning with Christianity itself – are more likely to experience its cultural destabilizing effects than those at a greater distance from it.” -Gil Bailie, from “Violence Unveiled”
Saturation in the Christian ethos doesn’t diminish either the ubiquity of sinfulness in general or of sinful recourse to the GMSM in particular. For evidence, look no further than the two great European killing grounds of the 20th Century –Russia and Germany– which had been Christian for 1,000 and 1,200 years, respectively, when they detoured into the madness of mechanized mass murder.
But proximity to the Christian ethos does change the character of the GMSM, and that is a danger we must be particularly alert to now that we are entering a period of profound social dislocation in the United States. In the myths of archaic religion, original acts of violence were often presented as a defense of the people against overt assaults by a monsters, demons, or gods. In a nominally Christian context, the GMSM requires different kinds of myths, myths that justify violence in terms of retributive justice, often against an enemy who is perceived to have already caused grievous injury to society, often surreptitiously. The accusatory gesture is often refashioned as a sword of justice, and the result is the victimization of those perceived to be victimizers.
In the United States, periods of great social dislocation have long given rise to racist and nativist movements that cast accusatory gestures at groups purported to have “caused” contemporaneous social and economic problems. If, for the purposes of this discussion, we set aside the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans and the 250-year enslavement of Africans, which had different ideological and even theological sources, we can easily detect the distinctive working of the GMSM at three critical and chaotic junctures in American history: the post-Civil War Reconstruction period in the South; the Progressive Era, when the nation was faced with a massive influx of immigrants and the Great Migration of two million southern blacks into northern cities; and the 1950′s and 60′s, when the Civil Rights and anti-war movements, following hot on the heels of the Red Scare, upended comfortable American assumptions about race, rights, and civic obligation. It is no accident that these periods in American history correspond perfectly to the life-cycle of such organizations as the Ku Klux Klan, which was born in the Reconstruction South, revived in the 1920′s and 30′s, when it claimed over 4 million members, and revived again in the post-WWII era. Because of its Southern origins, the Klan is most often associated with violence against African-Americans, but for most of its history the organization has cast a wider net. In addition to blacks, and along with allied organizations such as the German-American Bund and the John Birch Society, the Klan distributed its rage among Catholics (the Jesuits, Papal domination), Jews (Masonry, the Illuminati, the Bilderbergers, and the Trilateral Commission), Hispanics (illegal immigration), and ideological minorities, real or imagined (Socialism!).
In his landmark 1964 Harper’s Magazine article, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” social scientist Richard Hofstadter noted that scapegoating and conspiracy thinking are the product of a profound sense of dispossession, a feeling that the social and moral bedrock of a people has been or is being undermined. Here is his précis of the paranoid catalogue of evils in 1964. Note how closely it parallels the same complaints heard today:
”The old American virtues have already been eaten away by cosmopolitans and intellectuals; the old competitive capitalism has been gradually undermined by socialistic and communistic schemers; the old national security and independence have been destroyed by treasonous plots, having as their most powerful agents not merely outsiders and foreigners as of old but major statesmen who are at the very centers of American power.”
It is said that sometimes even paranoids have real enemies. And there is no question that wrenching social change is a constant feature of the dynamism that makes a nation like the United States a nation like the United States! The perception of dispossession, of the loss of old ways and moral certainties, is not a chimera. The United States in the 1920′s was, in fact, a radically different country than it had been in 1880, before massive waves of migration and immigration. In the 1950’s and 60′s there was a great dispossession, especially of the Southern middle class, as federal law was deployed to break a system of apartheid that had prevailed for 100 years. Today, concerns about employment, debt, resource scarcity, climate change, illegal immigration and international conflict are wholly legitimate. But the answer to these problems is not the cultivation of conspiratorial fantasies about their origin, nor, worse, the sacrificial measures some imply as remedies.
In the past few years, we’ve witnessed the video mugging of Shirley Sherrod by Andrew Breitbart; the Manchurian Baby ravings of Representative Louie Gohmert (R-TX); the spectacle of US Senators proposing a change to the 14th Amendment that would deny citizenship to selected (read: people with Mexican parents) persons born in the United States; Dr. Laura Schlesinger gleefully repeating the word “nigger” again and again in conversation with an African-American caller; Sarah Palin “tweeting” her support for Dr. Laura, writing “don’t retreat … reload,” whatever that means; a GOP candidate for New York governor proposing “prison dorms” for the poor; claims by agitators like Glenn Beck that the unemployed are mere slackers milking the public teat; the demonization, egged on by Newt Gingrich and others, of American citizens over plans to build an Islamic cultural center near the former World Trade Center site; an evangelical church in Florida planning a mass Koran burning to commemorate September 11; and news that one-fifth of Americans believe President Obama is secretly a Muslim, including a member of the Republican National Committee who insists that the President inadvertently revealed his true identity during his Egypt trip in June 2009. And, in the background, there is the growing though underreported national phenomenon of violence directed against Mexican and Central American immigrants (or those taken for Mexicans).
Fifty years ago the scapegoats were intellectuals, communists and Jews. One hundred years ago they were Catholics, Jews, and blacks. Today, Mexicans, Muslims, African-Americans, and the poor are increasingly the substitutionary victims of choice – the scapegoats – in a nation where the combination of unemployment, underemployment and abandonment of the labor market is reaching to 25% and where those who remain employed feel the hot breath of layoffs or business failure on their necks. It matters not that these communities had little or nothing to do with the crisis in which we find ourselves. As Rene Girard has shown, the actual innocence or guilt of victims is always beside the point. It is their narrative guilt that counts because narrative is the fuel that stirs the accusatory gesture, and by extension the GMSM, to life.
The real source of victim substitutions is the appetite for violence that awakens in people when anger seizes them and when the true object of their anger is untouchable. The range of objects capable of satisfying the appetite for violence enlarges proportionally to the intensity of the anger.” -Rene Girard, “I Saw Satan Fall Like Lightning”
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So, who or what is the “true object” of the anger welling up from the American body politic in the late summer of 2011? What “untouchable” figure or force is responsible for our dire predicament? My answer would be similar to that offered by G.K. Chesterton when the Times of London sponsored an essay contest on the question, “What is wrong with the world?” Chesterton’s brief, two-word essay read simply,
“I am.”
The United States is now a zombie nation not because of something that Muslims, Mexicans, African-Americans, or the poor have done, but because it is filled with 310 million zombies, spiritual corpses who give the appearance of life, but are filled with “dead men’s bones and every kind of impurity.”
This is the most disconcerting answer of them all, and the real reason why the “true object of [our] anger is untouchable.” In our pride and sinfulness we spurn the truth about ourselves and our country. As a result, the one thing we refuse to do at all costs is examine ourselves, each of us, and question our contributions to the disintegration we see around us. That was true in the bellum omnium contra omnes – the war of all against all – in primitive societies, and it is true today. And yet, we, all of us, are the source of our present discontent and the collapse that may be upon us. And it starts with me.
I am the one who intoned the pious litanies of personal responsibility while piling up mountains of personal and public debt.
It was me who bought into the destructive ideology of finance capitalism that is now drilling out the marrow of our middle and working classes.
I threw family farmers off their land. I shuttered factories across the Midwest and sent those jobs overseas.
I erected the global military empire that is now crumbling beneath our feet.
I am the one who marched into country after country, killing hundreds of thousands, all the while congratulating myself that the United States is a peace loving nation.
I am the one who loudly insisted on my commitment to the dignity of human life while aborting my children, engaging in pre-emptive war, torturing my enemies and punishing lethal violence with lethal violence.
I made a mockery out of marriage, fidelity, love and self-restraint.
I flocked to preachers and gurus who tickled my ears and told me that the only life worth living is one defined by personal enrichment and self-fulfillment, even at the expense of others.
I abused the earth and refused to accept limits on my consumptive lifestyle.
I elected and re-elected those who would give me what I want and demand nothing in return.
I am the one who exports pornography and weapons of death to the rest of the world and receives resentment and hatred in return.
It was me who declared my great love of God but abandoned the poor, the elderly, and the young to the streets or the tender mercies of the bureaucratic state.
But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come. For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away! – II Timothy 3: 1-5
So what is the answer? We know who to blame and who not to blame. But what do we do about it? Do we sit on the beach like some Pacific cargo cult, lighting pyres, hoping to lure Ronald Reagan back over the horizon with a boatload of Morning in America? God forbid. Do we retreat into armed enclaves and gated communities, ready to fend off the intruder, the outsider? No. That would only mean doubling down on what we’ve been doing already. Do we abandon the idea of personal liberty and turn our fate over to the National Security State, the Nanny State or the Corporate State? We’ve already been down that road.
No, the solution to our problems can be found in one word: conversion. Conversion will not improve the GDP, put people back to work, or protect us from nuclear terrorism, but conversion will save us as a people.
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Powerful, provocative, true.
Sam
Mark—
Well said, & thank you for the provocation, as well as for bringing Girard into view. About Girard, though, maybe you can help me with something. I’m aware of his conversion years ago & how he applies his theories to the scriptural witness, but I also think he turns Satan into an abstraction, not allowing him to be an actual angelic being. Satan represents certain things for Girard, but does not have actual existence. Doesn’t this imply that the way we understand scapegoating & mimesis will differ considerably from the biblical perspective, where our enemies are genuine powers & principalities? Won’t, say, a psychoanalytic evaluation then be allowed to swallow up the traditional Christian teaching regarding spiritual warfare? This seems to have implications for how we might respond to some of the things in your post.
On a different, though I think related note, have you ever read Robert C. Bartlett’s “Souls without longing”? An interesting essay on the spiritual malaise afflicting our young; some of your comments reminded me of this. The link:
http://www.nationalaffairs.com/public_interest/detail/souls-without-longing
Again, thanks.
Anthony, thank you for the thoughtful comment. When I first encountered Girard’s thinking through extensive personal contacts with Gil Bailie, I had similar questions, and not only about Satan, but about atonement, Eucharist, etc.
When one engages Girard, one has to keep in mind that his concern is anthropological, not strictly theological, much less dogmatic. He believes that an incarnational Christianity needs an anthropology as much as it needs a theology, and he further believes that he has discovered the critical anthropological insights embedded in the Christian scriptures. It is my understanding that over the years Girard has been drawn deeply into the sacramental and prayer life of the Church, and he has recently said that the effect of his work should be to buttress an orthodox (and by implication, magisterial) theological intepretation of scripture. So, I’m sure Rene Girard has no problem reciting the Creed, and meaning it.
But we also have to remember that there is no article in the Creed that begins, “I believe in Satan …” That being the case, there is a wide latitude available to Girard in consideration of things “satanic.” As for the “genuine” powers and principalities, I think Girard shows that imitative desire is as genuine a “power” and the scapegoating mechanism as powerful a “principality” as any conception of disembodied angelic beings. Ultimately, spiritual warfare is conducted against sin, not Satan, whether he is an abstract principle or a personal being.
That said, you really should read Girard to really get him, including on this question. I recommend, “The Girard Reader” for an overview.
Thanks again, and thanks for the link to Bartlett’s piece.
Thanks for the reply. You’re right about the Creed’s silence on Satan, though I like what CS Lewis says about this, namely, that belief in Satan (as a fallen angel), while it is hardly central to the faith, nevertheless agrees with the plain sense of Scripture & the tradition of Christendom. One might add that the Catechism is also clear on this, leaving perhaps less latitude than some might like. I know Catholics who laugh off the Church’s teaching on Satan as a pious holdover from the past, which enlightened believers jettison in favor of the latest theory from the America Psychological Association. Girard & his expositors are not in this crowd; James Williams & Gil Bailie are far too sensible to play games of chronological snobbery, & Girard’s work has always stuck me as an honest attempt to uncover & develop dimensions of the Catholic tradition that our age needs to hear. I agree that “satanic” can be applied in many directions, as Girard does. But I do wonder how far we can go in removing Satan from our battles. Sure, our warfare is directed against sin, but isn’t Satan implicated in this? “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil,” sin & death included. I’ve known the “Devil-behind-every-bush” type of Christian, & they seem to exaggerate a great many things. It also strikes me, however, that in areas of the world where the faith is growing in leaps & bounds, especially in the Southern hemisphere, Satan as a fallen angel
actively seeking to disrupt & distort is taken very seriously.
One area of Girard that intrigues me, & which is related to this conversation, including my mention of Lewis, concerns his general approach to the role of myth within pre-Christian cultures. Isn’t it the case for Girard that Christianity subverts myth by uncovering the scapegoating mechanism driving it? And doesn’t this sever any real continuities between the gospel & what Lewis called the “good dreams” found scattered throughout the pre-Christian world? For Lewis, many of the pagan stories served as a kind of “praeparatio evangelica.” While the differences are more important for him, the continuities are both striking & a sign of God’s grace. He doesn’t engage in a detailed anthropological investigation anywhere, but his work, including his letters, are filled with an appreciation of the scattered signs of God’s work in Christ he detects in pagan societies. Could Girard share anything of Lewis’s appreciation here? I’m curious as to what you think. Cheers.
Anthony, we can’t remove Satan from our battles at all. Girard writes,
That sounds a lot like Lewis, no? But, again, Lewis and Girard have completely different purposes. Girard isn’t an apologist. Nor is he an evangelist. And he is not, strictly speaking, writing for a popular audience. Far from suggesting that we ought to remove Satan from the equation, Girard is insisting that “his” role continues to be central to an anthropological understanding of fallen human culture and the Gospel texts that illuminate it.
Myth. The three most important contributions of Girard are a.) his Mimetic Theory; b.) his articulation of the scapegoating mechanism and its role in the founding of archaic human culture; and c.) his discovery that the Jewish and Christian scriptures, especially the gospels, are a powerful hermeneutic force that demythologizes not only structures of archaic religion, but all attempts to revive the primitive sacred, including from within Christianity itself.
Gil Bailie notes that, “the root of the Greek word for myth, muthos, means “to close” or to “keep secret.” Muo means to close one’s eyes or mouth, to mute the voice, or to remain mute.” From Girard’s perspective, what myth keeps secret, or closed, is the truth about original acts of murder and the founding of cultures. Its purpose is to occlude recognition of the innocence of victims. Bailie goes on: “In he New Testament, mthos is juxtapose both to Logos – the revelation of that about which myth refuses to speak – and to aletheia – the Greek word for truth … the Gospels tel of a perfectly typical story of victimization with astonishing insight into the role religious zeal and mob psychology played in it. Most importantly, and contrary to all myth, the story is told from the point of view of the victim and not that of the righteous community of persecutors. Thus the passion story breaks decisively with the silence and circumspection of the mythological thought. The gospel truth gradually makes it impossible for us to keep forgetting what myth exists to help us forget.
I understand Lewis’ purpose in highlighting those elements of pagan mythology that seem to point to the revelation of Christ, but we have to be very careful about such an appropriation. In the hands of a Joseph Campbell and others, such similarities become an excuse to lump Christianity in with all the others, to claim that it is just one more mythological story of a savior king. I think Girard would say (I think he has said, I just can’t find it) that in this time, when the revival of the primitive sacred is a real danger, emphasizing the superficial similarities between the Christian gospel and pagan mythology is counterproductive to the task of evangelization. Better to emphasize the utterly unique perspective and demythologizing power of that gospel.
But we also have to remember that there is no article in the Creed that begins, “I believe in Satan …”
Just a quick observation: Right before we cite the Creed during our Baptismal Promises, we reject Satan, and all his works and empty promises.
Yes, but four points. First, there is nothing in Girard’s work that requires one to reject belief in Satan as a supernatural being, and I’m not sure that he rejects that belief. Second, Girard is concerned with the anthropological function of evil. You might say that his concern is the process, not the person, which is appropriate for his work. Third, the baptismal creed certainly doesn’t include a detailed theology of the Evil One, and it seems possible to me that a person could in good conscience reject Satan as a generative process or principle without committing heresy. Fourth, I am also aware that Benedict XVI has written, “Whatever the less discerning theologians may say, the devil, as far as Christian belief is concerned, is a puzzling but real, personal and not merely symbolical presence.” I accept that, and I don’t think anything in Girard necessarily contradicts it.
What a prophetic message…Were you spit out of the whale’s belly in Rhode Island?
Mark you spoke right to my heart and I commend you for having the wherewithall to post such an insightful message. I hope no one skips over this post. Is it too old fashioned to suggest prayer and fasting?
HA! No, it is not too old-fashioned to suggest prayer and fasting. As the old Negro spiritual goes “It was good for Paul and Silas / It was good for Paul and Silas / It was good for Paul and Silas / And it’s good enough for me.”
Thanks for the nice words.
Very timely post as I’m in the process of reading The Girard Reader. We are indeed in great danger of making a new group of people our community scapegoats and we would be wise to heed the lessons of WWII in this regard.
Dymphna, thanks for commenting. I’ve admired Dymphna’s Well for some time.
I find it interesting that the “culprits” mentioned in the middle of the article, Sarah Palin, Andrew Breitbart, Representative Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Dr. Laura Schlesinger, are all republicans or conservatives!
Who is doing the scapegoating?
Who is wrecking the social fabric of this country? Who changed the immigration laws?
I’m sorry, it is not “I”. Is it a wonder that this author does not point to the numerous socialist and communist organizations that have infiltrated this country, or brought here by immigrants? In 1890, there were over 200 socialist and communist organizations here in America, not compliant or respectful of the Constitution and American society, but were willing and wanting to change it. Is it a wonder that this author does not mention the Frankfurt School, the author and promulgator of Political Correctness which is Marxist ideology, which is now named the Institute for Social Research. Its goal is to change society toward Marxist ideals. He doesn’t mention that, but mentions Sarah Palin who is about the most Authentic American I’ve seen. He complains about Palin, but not the Institute for Social Research which is about transforming America to Marxist ideals.
Who is destroying this country? Sarah Palin? or is it the Frankfurt School? who?
One of the nice things about blogging at Vox Nova is that contributors have the right to moderate comments on their posts. Mr. Wheeler, I’ve allowed you to have your say on my post, but given the tenor and content of your commentary elsewhere, the tether here is very short. Your observation that Sarah Palin is “about the most Authentic American I’ve seen” only reinforces my suspicion that a.) you are incapable of separating media-manufactured myth from reality; and b.) that you have bought into the rosy idolatry of American nationalism, of which Palin is Avatar-in-Chief. Save your rejoinders and emails.
Mark:
Thanks for keeping the thread open even to comments which directly illustrate Girard’s principles. When I read Wheeler’s comment, I felt a powerful mimetic urge to respond in kind, and started pounding out a reply. Awareness that my urge itself illustrates what I intended to denounce led me to type Ctrl-A Ctrl-X (delete all). Satan cannot drive out satan, but awareness of satan takes all the fun out of cooperating with him.
Such a cathartic experience, a great way to start the morning!
Frank, the thread is open to anyone, even W.L Wheeler, who can offer thoughtful commentary and not just shopworn shibboleths.
That said, thank you for a very thoughtful comment. Yes, I too prefer to nip mimetic rivalry in the bud by withdrawing from the fight lest I wind up with “eyes that cannot see, ears that cannot hear.” It isn’t as fun as blood on the floor, but it is a more righteous recourse, I hope. That wasn’t always my approach, but my exposure to Girard is helping me overcome my hairtrigger nature! :-)
Where are these “over 200 socialist and communist organizations” now? It appears that you are fighting the wrong battle.
Mark, thank you very much for this. Please do keep writing more of the same substance and style. I look forward to reading more of your wonderful work.
I’m familiar with the idea of mimetic desire, but do not understand it well. In particular, I do not understand how conversion operates under such a model, and moreover, how Christ plays a part in that conversion. The process as I understand it goes this way: Mimetic Desire -> Mimetic Rivalry -> Scapegoating.
i understand how Christ unmasks scapegoating. As a Christian, I know the problem is me, and I no longer have the capacity to truly scapegoat. I’ve experienced that. I even understand that my desires are disordered (mimetic). My sin in its wholeness has been unmasked by Christ. I stand convicted. I am the problem.
But I still have those mimetic desires. I am still a sinner. I remain, in that sense, unconverted. I am still the problem. How will Christ save me from my mimetic desires?
I can only say this: Christ has given me a new desire—to be free, holy, saved; to be God’s good son. But this one desire is so small, so tiny among so many passionate and large and unholy desires. It barely deserves the name of desire. It is just a seed, really. And it is being crushed.
“Miserable one that I am! Who will deliver me from this mortal body?” (Rm 7:24).
Nate, first let me say that I have long admired you. You and I have some similar military experiences. We both spent a lot of time in the woods at Fort Benning, for instance. I KNOW how difficult it must have been for you to stand up and say, “No.” That you would follow Christ and your conscience, even at great personal sacrifice, is inspiring.
Here’s the thing about mimesis. It’s like gravity. We don’t choose, reject, adopt, shed, minimize, or modulate it. We are mimetic beings just as we are beings that have weight, which therefore makes us subject to gravity. The question is, are we aware of the power of imitative desire and where it can lead us?
I won’t get into this too deeply, but Girard describes the mimetic relationship as triangular, composed of subject, the object, and the model. The subject desires the object, but that desire is mediated by the model, who is the real focus of attraction. In turn, the model, who is also a subject in his own right, desires the same object through the mediation of his model, the first subject, who becomes the real focus of his attraction. You’ll note that the object in itself has no or little real value, except to the extent that it serves as a totem of the model. This triangular mimetic condition gives rise to rivalry, as each subject/model attempts to outdo the other in pursuit of the object. That rivalry blossoms into conflict, then violence, which spreads like a contagion as others are attracted to the object through the mediation of other subjects/models.
The question for Christians isn’t, “How can I shed mimesis?” We can’t. Don’t even try. The real question is, “Who is my model? Who mediates my desire?” The answer should be “My model is Christ!” And if not Christ directly, then those who are imitating Christ. In other words, the saints! This is why St. Paul says, “Imitate me as I imitate Christ.” Gil Bailie says that holiness comes not by pretending we’re not mimetic. That’s the world’s game, and Gil has done amazing work on the false autonomy celebrity culture, for instance. No, the path to holiness is found in embracing our mimetic nature and refocusing it on the Model par excellence, Christ.
Like gravity, mimesis itself is morally neutral. Gravity can be employed to deliver life-saving medicine and food, or death-dealing ordnance. Mimesis will either lead us down the path of sinful desire, rivalry, conflict, violence, and murder; or it will lead us to the imitatio christi. Having been awakened to the power of mimesis, and with God’s grace, we can follow the latter course. From a Girardian point of view, this is what is meant by “the victory of the cross.”
Great post, Mark.
From a political perspective, I think a good way of approaching the current (terminal, I suspect) crisis might be to think of it in terms of how best to manage the unwinding of the United States as a great power.
I’ll probably post something on that soon.
Thanks, Matt. Don’t victimize the victimizers! Remember, Satan cannot cast out Satan.
Can Mark Gordon apply this to the Spanish Civil War? Spain was a Catholic country. Was it GMSM working in the Spanish Civil War? Did not both sides line up their victims and machinegun them down? Was it GMSM that genocided the Russian Royal Family? Was it GMSM at work at Kharkhov where stars were carved in the foreheads of the victims? Where shop owners were run down and murdered?
Can you place your GMSM in history outside of the ohh-soo familiar setting of Hitler? Was it GMSM, let’s say, active in the French Revolution, like the massacres occuring in the Vendee?
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.
If Wheeler would bother to read even the most cursory summary of Girard’s thought, he would discover that its focus is anthropological, which means it is applicable to all human societies and groups, and even the psychology of individuals. He would also learn what Girard has to say about mimetic modeling, doubling, and rivalry, all of which lead to the kinds of reciprocal atrocities he cites, without regard to race, class, nation or ideology.
But he hasn’t read Girard, has he? And he won’t, will he? Because W. Lindsay Wheeler knows it all already, even when he has no idea what he’s talking about!
I am struggling to see why this post has caused such a strong negative reaction on the part of Mr. Wheeler. I read it as a call to examine how we can identify what we need to change in ourselves to improve society to recognize when we are scapegoating and to come to the aid of the scapegoat. The ending especially seems to point that out. Yes all of the current political examples he gave were of things said by conservatives. I feel more of this type of talk today comes from conservatives, I think it is because of the way a conservative thinks, but that is probably because of my own bias. It is hard to give examples in a post like this without seeming to fall subject to the same kind of action you are criticizing. By not focussing on the people mentioned, but going on to the nest point I do not feel Mark is scapegoating the conservatives he mentions. I hope Mark would not object to examples of liberals blaming the “other”: for the problems in the world, I wouldn’t if they are accurate.
But Mr. Wheeler is attacking the minutia of the post without explaining the reason for the attack. It seems he feels insulted or challenged by the post in a way that upsets him that I do not understand.
Paul, in order to understand Mr. Wheeler, you would have to have read Mr. Wheeler’s commentary here and all across the Internet. Angry and indignant is his default mode, which is why you won’t see his name appended to any of my posts again. I do not have a problem with people opposing my point of view, even when they do it vigorously. But I insist that they at least do their homework and maintain a minimally civil tone.
My examples of incipient scapegoating did feature figures on the Right because, as you suggest, that is where the contemporary momentum lies. And, as I tried to show in my post, such sentiments on the Right have a long pedigree in American life. I certainly would not shrink from highlighting similar examples on the Left, but I find that they are too few and far between to mention. That is not to say that there isn’t a lot of hateful, disgusting speech on the Left. There is. But apart from blaming “corporations” generally for the ills afflicting America, I simply don’t see any examples of people on the Left identifying this or that group – Christians, for example; or whites – as the source of our troubles and a lingering threat, and certainly not major figures in the Democratic Party.
It is exceptionally easy to see Satan in those we do not like or with whom we do not agree, it is exceptionally difficult to see Satan in views we like and with whom we agree.
Just a comment. Love this post, btw. Thought provoking!
It is yet even more difficult to see Satan in ourselves.
Mark, this is the best thing I’ve read in a long time.
Mark writes:
“So, who or what is the “true object” of the anger welling up from the American body politic in the late summer of 2011? What “untouchable” figure or force is responsible for our dire predicament? My answer would be similar to that offered by G.K. Chesterton when the Times of London sponsored an essay contest on the question, “What is wrong with the world?” Chesterton’s brief, two-word essay read simply,
“I am.” ”
So why spend the previous 2 paragraphs “scapegoating” Republicans? I don’t think you can deny that the individuals you name are Republicans.
Could it be possible that the “tea party” is the real scapegoat?
This is the problem with discussing Girard’s theory in a current context and heightened political climate. In everything I have read of Girard, including interviews, he never delves into current politics and definitely doesn’t point fingers to specific individuals to support his theory.
I think you lose the message, when you start making it political or personal, because as you stated the real problems are because of “you”, “me”, “I” and not Sarah or Newt.
I’m quite aware that victimizing the victimizers is a danger (which Girard discusses at length), but it is something quite different from scapegoating to identify the rise of a scapegoating mentality among important, even dominant, groups in society. I didn’t scapegoat Republicans or conservatives at all. Where did I cast an accusing finger at these groups as the source of our current problems, with the suggestion, implied or explicit, that they should be suppressed or silenced? I didn’t. In fact, I redirected the accusatory gesture away from them and pointed it at myself: white, male, middle-aged, middle class, suburban, privileged. If Tea Party members – who are overwhelmingly white, middle-aged, middle class, suburban, and privileged – would exercise the same sort of self-scrutiny we might actually make a dent in solving our problems.
As I wrote in a comment above, the scapegoating momentum in this country at this time is on the Right, as it usually is during periods of social crisis stretching back to the founding of the Republic. Immigrants, welfare “cheats,” the unemployed, government employees, public pensioners, Muslims, all these groups are the targets of figures on the Right ranging from Limbaugh and Savage to Bachmann and Palin. You may be embarrassed by or willfully ignorant of that, but that’s your problem.
“the scapegoating momentum in this country at this time is on the Right, as it usually is during periods of social crisis…” I don’t think this was the case for much of the 20th century. From FDR’s presidency until about the Reagan presidency, labor unions, civil rights activists and leftists raised much more strident and audible voices. These groups had (and still have) legitimate complaints and worthy social/political objectives, but it was inevitable that, especially toward the later part of their heyday passionate scapegoating typically had a leftist character. We had groups like the Weather Underground, the SLA, and fringe Communists of all kinds carrying out atrocities.
It seems to me that mimetic barnacles eventually grow on the hull of whatever political boat happens to be sailing most swiftly and visibly in the moment.
Frank, I am surprised. First, you make my point when you write, “mimetic barnables eventually grow on the hull of whatever political boat happens to be sailing most swiftly and visibly in the moment.” Okay. My piece was titled “The Fire This Time.” So, what political boat happens to be sailing most swiftly and visibly at THIS moment?
But let’s return to your really strange reading of 20th Century American history. You write, “From From FDR’s presidency until about the Reagan presidency, labor unions, civil rights activists and leftists raised much more strident and audible voices.” First of all, “strident voices” don’t necessarily correlate to scapegoating. Neither do individual, isolated acts of violence, although it could be said that such acts are manifestations of mimetic desire. During the 30′s, 40′s or 50′s, did labor unions or their supporters in Congress hold hearings in which the question “Are you now or have you ever been a capitalist” was asked? Were artists and writers blacklisted for belonging to the Republican Party, or having friends who were suspected Republican sympathizers? Was the German-American Bund, just a figment of some leftwing imagination? Was Father Coughlin, the most popular radio personality in the 1930s? Was there any labor-inspired equivalent of the Red Scare? Of course not. In fact, most of the traditional left in this country was more than happy to have “communists” scapegoated by Joe McCarthy and his ilk.
In the 50′s and 60′s, did the SCLC or the NAACP attempt to marginalize or victimize white Americans? How was the Birmingham Bus Boycott an example of scapegoating? Did the Governor of, say, Michigan, stand at schoolhouse door in Ann Arbor and prevent white students from walking in while crowds of blacks jeered and spat on them, and later beat them senseless? Were groups like the John Birch Society, the Klan, the White Citizens Councils, and the Sons of Confederate Veterans – organizations that boasted millions of members during the middle of the 20th Century – just leftist propaganda?
Yes, the SDS and its offshoot, the Weather Underground, were violent. The latter was a full-blown terrorist organization. But they began their existence by breaking with the old Left for insisting on peaceful, evolutionary change within the system. That’s why they called themselves the New Left. The Weather Underground appeared in mid-1969 and had all but completely dissolved by the end of 1973, with the announcement of the Paris Peace Accords. At its height, the Weather Underground had maybe a few dozen members. Same with the Black Panthers, SNCC and other violent black liberation groups. They formed around the idea that the the old civil rights establishment was too peaceful. Stokely Carmichael’s hijacking of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee is a classic example. Carmichael took over SNCC in 1966 and left a year later to form the Black Panthers. By 1970, SNCC was finished due to lack of interest. The history of the Panthers is similar. Founded in 1967, it never had more than a few hundred members, flared briefly, and died an early death.
Were these groups guilty of scapegoating violence? Yes. But they hardly rose to the level of popular movements, and in fact represented a decisive break with the old Left and the traditional civil rights movement, both of which had rejected violence.
Mark:
I’m not embarrassed in any way since I don’t support many of the views of the people you mention.
Can only an individual in a majority “class” be involved in scapegoating? Are scapegoats only the powerless?
Also, isn’t the fact that two opposing forces use the scapegoating of a third party to obtain peace and social cohesion? I think the scapegoating in a political context would be the wars fought in foreign lands. Democrats and Republicans, which includes most Americans, agreed that Sadam and Osama were righteous victims. In my view this is the real “scapegoating” which is obscured in posts like this. My point is that you are not expressing anything that is not already agreed upon by millions of people in the US. You are posting thoughts that are expressed unhesitantly in newspaper and internet editorials. But see the point of your essay that it is all about “me”, “you”, and “I” so why start pointing fingers. I could easily point out that many people are scapegoating the “billionaires” and the “rich”. They have power but are definitely in a minority. Actually this would fit with Girard’s theory of classical myths.
Girard was never political in his writings because he understood the danger of doing so. Maybe he understands espousing a belief and living it can never be separated without a corresponding loss of truth, holiness and love.
Can only an individual in a majority “class” be involved in scapegoating? Are scapegoats only the powerless?
Oh, this is like the familiar whine, “Can’t blacks be racists, too?” Well, yes. Minorities and other socially powerless groups can engage in scapegoating, too. We’re witnessing that right now, I think, in these flash mob attacks in which groups of young blacks select white victims for pummeling.
But those kids aren’t representative of millions of African-Americans. The figures I cited in my piece are some of the most popular radio entertainers, television personalities, and politicians in the country, with millions of followers, control of institutions ranging from television networks to major newspapers to one of the two dominant political parties to half of the US House of Representatives. They have the power effectively cast the accusatory gesture, with reasonable certainty that it will be adopted by a majority of the population. And, they have the power to turn threats into reality.
I think the scapegoating in a political context would be the wars fought in foreign lands. You and I agree. The war in Iraq, certainly, was a classic case of scapegoating. The Bush Administration, shaken and confused by 9-11, sought the first and easiest credible victim it could find, and most of the country was more than happy to go along. Including, at the time, ME!
I could easily point out that many people are scapegoating the “billionaires” and the “rich”. There is some of that, I grant. But at most people on the Left are calling for rich to be … taxed. A little more. About what they were taxed in the Clinton Administration. And many of those same rich people agree. That hardly matches the kind of rhetoric we’ve heard directed at Mexicans, Muslims, government employees, the unemployed, the poor, and so forth from the Right.
Girard was never political in his writings because he understood the danger of doing so. First, Girard is still alive and continues to offer his views. Second, he is not partisan, but he is highly political. The GMSM is a social phenomenon. How could it not be observed in and applied to a socio-political context? Third, your implication is that Mimetic Theory should remain an obscure academic and intellectual parlor game, but that makes no sense. Mimetic Theory is a description of what is really going on underneath the kinds of social upheavals that shape our culture and history. Suggesting its application to those concrete, contemporary situations should be suppressed is, it seems to me, foolish.
A last word: Until February 2009, I had been a lifelong Republican. In fact, in that month, I resigned as chair of my local Republican Party. I had run for Town Council the previous November on the Republican ticket. I considered myself not only a Republican, but a conservative, and I still do on many issues, especially those that align with the authentic teaching of the Church. I did not become a Democrat, and I do not consider myself a member of the Left.
So, why did I leave? Because having been exposed to Girard’s work, I was apalled at what I interpreted as the rising scapegoating sentiment within the GOP and the conservative movement, including the Tea Party. In my opinion, we are seeing all the classic signs of the development of a scapegoating contagion within that movement. If it were happening on the Left, I would call it that way, but I don’t. That’s not scapegoating the Tea party and conservative movements. Many of those folks continue to be friends, neighbors and family members. It’s an attempt to snap them out of the mimetic fixation that appears to be gathering.
Mark:
First, I “made your point” deliberately: I agree with your assessment of the nature of visible, in-the-media scapegoating by today’s political right. Your original claim, however, was that historically the scapegoating was “usually on the right,” and this is the part I am still not convinced of. Your very impressive recounting of excesses committed by both sides during the last century is impressive, and yes, you’ve convinced me that at the very least “the right” carried out scapegoating continuously and unapologetically. I’m still not convinced that scapegoating has been exclusively a right-wing or left-wing phenomenon, though, and I’ve seen plenty of scapegoating from the “left” as well. The current generation of leftists just doesn’t seem to have much skill in making it work “for them.”
I’m tempted to speculate about whether the post-modern influence on leftists causes them to dissipate their energy deconstructing everything, but I have a day job which needs needs my attention…
Mark:
Thanks for the response.
I believe that we agree on more things than not. Keep up the good work.
Gordie
Great essay. Those who reject Christ, and especially those whose very religion is predicated upon the rejection of Christ and therefore the logos, are particularly susceptible to scapegoating, and we see this int he Apartheid state of Israel and neoconservative demonization of Muslims and the labeling of integral Christians as antisemites. It’s a kind of racism that many Catholics have been corrupted by: See here:
http://www.culturewars.com/2009/Racist%20Catholics.htm
Thad, you probably knew this when you offered your comment, but the blog, Suicide of the West, that you cite in your piece was me. I was wrong then, still uncritically supporting everything done by Israel and brooking no insults to her pristine moral character. But I was myself morally conflicted by that position, which no doubt accounts for the vehemence of my denunciations of those who, rightly, condemned Israel’s shameful conduct during the Gaza siege. I’ve covered a lot of ground in a few years.
That said, and admitted, you will no doubt agree that the Jews have been the scapegoats of choice for 2,000 years, culminating in the Shoah. You may also agree that there remain many Christians who still bear that same scapegoating animus toward them. We’ve lately had one of those sorts posting on this blog, this thread, even. None of that excuses Israeli atrocities, or my own sinfulness in ascribing antisemitism to critics of Israel, but antisemitism is still a lurking reality in the West and elsewhere, even as a form of victimizing the victimizers.